Dorion raises an interesting question–we talk a lot about backup, but maybe not as much about getting that data back quickly:

Data replication is meant to take your data elsewhere, take your data offsite. We tend to focus too much about taking the data out of here, but we lose focus on what happens when that data needs to be used in event of a disaster.

If the connectivity is poor, or restricted enough to need something like WAN optimization to get our data across the wire, what happens when we try to get it back if we had a major site disaster? It becomes an issue–you need to think about that: it’s not all about backing up the data, it’s about being able to use it following a disaster. That’s the ultimate goal here.

Anyone out there share those concerns about accessibility of data in the cloud or at a disaster recovery site?

While some may not consider damage control-type PR to be a concern when you’re dealing with disaster recovery, Kirvan argues that a good media response plan can make the difference with public perception when trouble strikes:

Organizations of almost any size, regardless of private or public sector, must be aware of the possibility of dealing with the media. A well-organized media response plan—coordinated with other corporate emergency response activities—can make a huge difference in how the organization is perceived by the media, and therefore the public, stakeholders, investors and other interested parties.

A pair of recent surveys from storage vendors paints a mixed bag for SMB disaster recovery planning and a cautious embrace of cloud storage.

First, the cloud: According to a Drobo survey (free with login) of over 250 business stakeholders and IT professionals conducted in May, SMBs are planning to adopt hybrid cloud storage. 32 percent of respondents indicated that 50 percent of their company’s storage would be onsite and 50 percent in the cloud within the next 3 years. Ninety-nine percent of respondents said they will not move 100 percent of their storage to the cloud within the next 3 years. The study reportedly included 250 business and IT professionals.

And over at CA Technologies, a recently-released study shows that many small and medium sized organizations may haven’t prepared for the worst.

According to survey results, small North American companies (with between 50 to 499 workers) lost an average of about 440 productive man hours per year due to IT downtime. That resulted in an average annual revenue loss of about $55,112.

Meanwhile, medium-sized businesses (with 500 to 999 workers) lost an average of about 283 productive man hours per year, and an average revenue loss of 90,787.

Coleman Parkes Research, Ltd., conducted the survey independently for CA in the last quarter of 2010. The study also reported that small businesses were more likely than larger organizations to have a disaster recovery plan in place: 50 percent of small businesses had DR plans. That’s compared to 39 percent of medium-sized businesses, and 42 percent of large businesses.)

Another 23 percent of small businesses, and 46 percent of medium-sized businesses, are developing DR plans, according to the report. About 6 percent of small businesses and 3 percent medium-size businesses said they had no DR plans in place.

Coleman Parkes interviewed CIOs, IT directors and senior managers of a total of 2,000 small, medium and large companies in Europe and North America.

We’re focusing here on the results from the 200 North American companies included in the study, which included organizations from the financial, retail and manufacturing industries, as well as the public sector.

But while Sepaton’s S2100-DS3 does not dedupe across remote sites, the company is looking to offer global deduplication across remote sites in the future for the DS3, according to Florin Dejeu, director of product management.

Sepaton currently supports global deduplication in its S2100-ES2 enterprise systems.

We’ll be recording a podcast later today with Paul Kirvan, of Paul Kirvan Associates and a member of the board of the Business Continuity Institute’s USA chapter, to talk about the importance of business continuity and disaster recovery planning in case of fire, flood, tornado or perhaps Stay Puft Marshmallow Man attack.

In order to secure your data, you must use a backup encryption solution. There are several data encryption products you can choose from, including disk or tape encryption, or hardware and software backup encryption. So how do you choose the right one for your environment? And how do you overcome challenges that arise with key management?

I sat down with Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at The Storage IO Group, to talk about backup encryption. Learn about the popular types of data encryption, how to choose between hardware and software backup encryption and the most common challenges users encounter with encryption.

Is email archiving important? As emails grow and grow, companies, including SMBs are trying to determine whether or not it’s important to have an email archive service for their environment. Email archives are good to have for e-discovery and litigation purposes, but it’s often difficult to decide what emails to archive. And how do you choose which email archiving service is right for your company?

I sat down with Brian Babineau, vice president of research and analyst services at the Enterprise Strategy Group, to discuss email archiving for SMBs. He talked to me about the challenges SMBs encounter with email archiving, how to choose between in-house and outsourced email archiving services and affordable email archive products that are on the SMB market right now.

Listen to our conversation in the MP3 below. And for more information, read the transcript for the podcast on email archiving for SMBs.

About This Blog

A blog about data protection issues in today's data storage world. Learn about data backup and recovery, disaster recovery and business continuity planning and strategies, and data backup and disaster recovery for the SMB.